Qantas Has Eight More A380s On Order, But has Little Use for Them

For any airline not called Emirates, A380s work best for the biggest cities, such as London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Sydney and Shanghai. For most other places, they have too many seats.

— Brian Sumers

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Qantas Airways Ltd. said it doesn’t want the remaining eight A380s it still has on order because the dozen it operates now are sufficient to meet demand, further dimming future sales prospects for the largest passenger plane that’s struggled to find buyers.

“Our intention is that we’re not taking those aircraft,” Qantas Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce said Friday at an airline conference in Brisbane, Australia.

Qantas was one of the original operators of the A380 and looked to become one of the biggest buyers of the double-decker built by Airbus Group SE. Joyce has pushed back delivery of the remaining planes for about two years now, joining customers including Virgin Atlantic Ltd. that haven’t outright canceled orders but are unlikely ever to have them fulfilled. That leaves Emirates of Dubai as the one committed buyer of the aircraft.

The A380 generally has about 525 seats, though Qantas’s carry 484. The airline uses the model on routes from Sydney or Melbourne to London via Dubai and to Hong Kong, Dallas and Los Angeles. The carrier made global headlines in late 2010, when an A380 en route from Singapore suffered a mid-flight engine explosion that ripped through the wing, though the aircraft returned to the airport safely and nobody was hurt. Since its first A380 went into service in 2008, Qantas has shifted its strategy to focus on direct routes between smaller cities rather than larger hubs with more passengers to fill bigger planes.

“We believe there’s a network for 12 that’s very good and works very well,” Joyce said. “We struggle with a network for the next eight.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse at aerothman@bloomberg.net, Angus Whitley in Brisbane at awhitley1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Reiter at creiter2@bloomberg.net, Tom Lavell, Naomi Kresge